


made for growing

by MashpotatoeQueen5



Category: The Mysterious Benedict Society - Trenton Lee Stewart
Genre: Acts of Kindness, Adopted Children, Bedtime Stories, Books, Constance has some issues with being abandoned, Constance is Six, Cute Kids, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Families of Choice, Father-Daughter Relationship, Fluff, Gen, Geniuses, Growing Old, Growing Up, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, Kindness, Literally they are all so smart how am I supposed to write them??, Mr. Benedict is such a sweet man, People Change People, Platonic Relationships, Post-Canon, Rhonda's husband to be stops by for dinner, Self-Doubt, Self-Reflection, Stardust by Neil Gaiman, Worry, and I think Mr. Benedict would love it too, because i love it, he loves his kids a whole lot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-12
Updated: 2020-10-12
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:20:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26977246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MashpotatoeQueen5/pseuds/MashpotatoeQueen5
Summary: Nicholas Benedict is getting older and things are changing all the time, but that will never stop him from loving his daughters and all the amazing things they have and will achieve.Or: Constance needs a little reassurance, Mr. Benedict has a lot of soft emotions, and there's a bedtime story.
Relationships: Nicholas Benedict & Constance Contraire
Comments: 6
Kudos: 28





	made for growing

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Pumkinthistle, who continues to be an amazing artist. Please go check their blog out if you ever get the chance!
> 
> Quote is from Stardust, by Neil Gaiman, one of my favourite books. I have a feeling it would be right up Nicholas' alley. 
> 
> Please enjoy two thousand words of Mr. Benedict being a sap :)

Nicholas Benedict has learned many things over the course of his life. Happy truths and quiet joys and the way things break in your hands. He has dedicated years into helping other people, has worked and worked and worked and now, finally, is getting to see the results of it all fall into place.

Rhonda is in the sitting room, laughing with her boyfriend, peering over a chalkboard laid horizontally on the ground. There are math equations scattered across the green expanse, dizzying in their complexity. He feels that familiar itch that has made its home inside his head, that ever growing urge to learn, to explore, to take the endless horizons stretching from his feet and hold them in the palms of his hands.

So much has changed, since he was a boy, and so much hasn’t. This thirst for wisdom, he thinks, is one thing that will never leave him.

He wants to sit besides them, these two young souls who found each other, look at the knowledge they have poured from their fingers and grow from it. But he is not needed, here, and Rhonda is giving him that look of nervous anticipation, still getting used to having her boyfriend in the house and around her family. 

The boyfriend- a nice young man named Luca- for his part, is looking at Rhonda like she just about organized all the stars in the sky.

_ This is good, _ Nicholas thinks to himself,  _ this is good. _ Because Rhonda deserves to go out into the world and dazzle everyone with her talents, especially after she's spent so much time of her young life saving it. She deserves to find people who love her outside of her family, to make friends and form relationships and grow ever more into herself. She has her whole life ahead of her, in all its infinitely complicated glory.

Still, he is going to miss her when she eventually leaves the nest.

With her dark eyes looking cautiously at him, Nicholas knows it's for the best for him to leave the room and let them have their privacy. He smiles and offers a small wave, which is happily returned. Then, to give reason for his entrance and hasty exit, grabs a book from one of the many shelves.

He recognizes the heft of the novel, the colour of the cover, and smiles: he holds in his hands an old favourite.

Slowly, quietly, he starts up the stairs. His oldest daughter is still awake, of course. He can tell from the way the old house creaks that Number Two is padding up and down her room, barefoot. But Constance had been sent up to bed over an hour ago, after an extravagant family dinner and delicious desert: they had wanted to make a good impression on Luca.

Constance had been upset, during the meal, sending petulant glances at the man and composing some of her more… on the nose poetry, so to speak. Nicholas had found it amusing. Rhonda had chuckled somewhat exasperatedly. Number Two had just sighed, mentioning off hand (after the girl had gone to bed) that she supposed they all should just be glad Constance managed a veil of politeness at all.

No matter what, they had certainly made an impression on Luca. Whether or not it was a good one remains to be seen.

(Nicholas has a hunch that says  _ yes,  _ they did make a good one, but he likes to see how these things unfold.)

He starts up the stairs to his study, intending on writing another academic paper- though his muse has yet to latch on to anything on particular- but then he stops.

The house creaks, the air shifts, and he knows that his eldest is not the only one still awake.

He reaches the next landing and heads down the hall, knocks quietly on a door painted yellow from Kate's quick hand.

No answer.

He cracks the door open.

If this were someone else, all they would see would be a small six year old girl sprawled under her bed sheets, snoring away the twighlight hours. 

But this isn't someone else. This is Nicholas Benedict, and the girl is Constance Contraire, and they never will be quite like the world sees them.

"I know you're awake, dear," he says, projecting as much warmth as he can. Constance cracks an eye open and glares, the blue of her iris shining out from the dark.

With a sigh, she sits up and reaches, clicking on the light. A frown is still on her face.

"I was  _ trying _ to sleep."

He doesn't tell her he knows she's lying.

"Then what’s keeping you awake?"

She purses her lips instead of answering, eyes roaming the room, looking for distraction. Her gaze falls on the novel he has tucked in the crook of his elbow, all but forgotten in the face of this new mystery.

"What book is that?"

"An old favourite." 

This game of questions is a familiar one, played time and time again. He thinks, absentmindedly,  _ A wraparound of words and thoughts, a verbal trap of ties and knots,  _ and smiles at his brain's own whimsy. 

Constance had been upset at dinner, and he hadn't quite understood why. But seeing her now, small and upset in the expanse of her bed, he thinks he knows.

After all, the same worries and doubts are on his own mind.

This is a man who knows what it is to grow up lonely and lonesome, to scramble desperately for some kind of affection, some kind of love. The world pushes on and on and every last human being is just being pulled along with it, living their lives and trying to keep their heads above the water.

Life is many things. It is cruel and it is unjust and it is full of twisted figures who work solely for their own gain. But it is also love and kindness, the things people do just because they are human, just because they can. Art and stories and a little girl sitting in a big bed, learning to fill the cracks in her chest with healing.

So Nicholas takes a step closer and another, smiles soft and bright.

"Would you like me to read to you?"

She shrugs, knocks her feet together under the blanket. "I can read for myself just fine," she says, and doesn't say no.

So Mr. Benedict sits besides her on the bed, opens the book to the first page, and hesitates, waiting. There are words hiding in the cracks of the small frame besides him and he would hear them, if she would share them.

And Constance shifts. Breathes. When the words come out, they come out small.

"What if she leaves us? What if he's nicer and better and cooler and then she doesn't care about us anymore?”

_ Ah,  _ Nicholas thinks,  _ there we are. _

He leans closer to her, to stare deep into those brilliant blue eyes. If he wanted, he could name the parts that make them up, the iris and cornea, the fovea and optic nerve. If he wanted, he could explain the genes that compose such a vibrant, vibrant watery blue. Instead, he admires how they spark with an entire universe of knowledge and are still so young, and cups her small face to tell a secret he learned many years ago and is still trying to understand, even now.

"You know," he whispers, his voice soft in all this quiet dark, "the people we love don't stop loving us just because they've fit someone new into their hearts."

Quiet word and quiet thoughts, made small by the fear. Constance looks up at him and her little brow furrows.

He takes her hand, small and smooth compared to his own. "Love is not finite, my dear. It never has been. Love is something made to grow."

He squeezes, and she squeezes back. He can read on her face that she doesn't quite believe him, not yet, too bruised by life's lessons to follow blindly without evidence, without proof. But she will see, in time. They both will. 

There was a time in Nicholas’ life where he looked to the world and saw only anguish and betrayal and bitter, broken things. The world was not kind and he had nothing to his name but his wit and sense of self preservation. He had thought, then, that that summed up life in all its measures.

And now he is older, wiser and learning still. He sits in a house filled to the brim with stories, those that can be found on paper and those he found all on his own. Rhonda is in the living room, laughing with a man that will one day be her husband, putting together theories that will change engineering forever. Number Two is putting together a memoir, quick fingers and small smiles, so many things to say and an audience who will listen. There are friends and family scattered across the country, across the world, letters stacked on his desk and plans for afternoon chess next Friday, editing and writing and reading. Good food and better company. 

Constance is leaning against his side, warm and present. This, too, is something that he never could have expected, this extraordinary child who makes him laugh, who is a fierce and burning star, who has so much waiting for her, just around the bend.

"Now," he says, in his most professional tone, if only to see her hide a grin, "to business."

He looks down at his well-loved book, traces the words with his fingers. It will take longer, like this, reading each word aloud, the story playing out only as fast as he can speak, but he finds he doesn’t mind.

They have time. Time to grow and live and  _ love.  _ There are horizons at their feet and nothing to stop them from chasing every saturated sunrise.

A million moments, a million choices, entire lifetimes, all leading them up to here, shared smiles in a room of illuminated shadows, something shining in their future, changed but no less bright.

He clears his throat, smiles, and begins to read.

_ "Chapter One: In Which We Learn of the Village of Wall…” _


End file.
